Mobility is a natural part of working in technology. As well as career changers from outside the industry, people frequently move between generalist and specialist roles, or switch to emerging areas such as DevOps and machine learning. Just as a blender makes a different kind of smoothie to a food processor, your choice of technical tools should depend on the type of job that you’re doing.

All projects involve some degree of uncertainty, no matter how effective the planning phase is. However, one advantage of having experience outside of your current job is that you can bring different frameworks, methodologies, and thought processes to the table. Contributing to open-source software, and involvement in the FOSS community, can be a valuable source of knowledge on ways of working, particularly when you’re working for an organisation that’s on a budget. However, it can be difficult to know how to translate that expertise into a commercial environment, or one where open-source isn’t valued.

So how do we apply lessons from the open-source world at non-FOSS companies? What kinds of questions should we ask to determine the best way to solve problems, and how can we use our expertise to recover from process-induced failure? From latkes to licenses to full-stack applications, let’s break down some different ways to build structures that support us in getting our jobs done.

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